Socioeconomic Status and Achievement Revisited

Abstract

Substantial conflicting research exists on the strength of the link between a child 's socioeconomic status (SES) and his or her achievement. Focusing on a key differential among previous explorations of the issue, the use of data at the individual student level or at an aggregated school level, this article reveals the strength of the "ecological fallacy. " Using a large sample of students, the aggregated data are shown to overstate the influence of SES by a factor of 4. The article concludes that the key to student achievement is not, simply, the income of their households.